Little Penguin Quilts Through the Year

Saturday, April 16, 2016

Quilty Math

I was a pretty good math student in school, and math was always one of my favorite subjects to teach to my 5th graders, but I am finding quilt math to be a bit challenging. Fortunately, I don't have to do it very often! This afternoon I've been playing with my Flying Geese blocks a little bit more. I decided I wanted to make some that were half the size of the original ones I made last week.

Following the Connecting Threads tutorial again, but this time cutting all the dimensions in half, should give me some half size geese units, shouldn't it?!? Look at all the math I had to do:

I made two new sets of flying geese units using the dimensions I figured out and here's how they turned out -

They were a little bit more than half of my original units. Looking back at the tutorial, and at my chicken scratches, I just realized that my mistake wasn't in the math, it was in getting confused between the "actual" size of the blocks and the "finished" size! Oh well, that is how you learn, right? It's a good thing I am just playing and not making something for an actual pattern.

Adding some solid strips and squaring up helps a lot!

And playing again with a layout (maybe for a red, white, and blue table topper for my dining room table), shows the new possibilities!

Well I am not great with math, usually I make DH help with that, LOL Love where you are going with your playing though! I like using the Fons and Porter flying geese ruler for my geese. I got it at Jo Ann's.

I enjoy math, I was the annoying kid who always knew the story problem answer. My problem is over-thinking the problem. If I just follow my instincts I'm good, but the harder I try the more likely an error will creep in, and those seam allowances are sneaky devils.

I love to play, every time I do it I think why don't I do this more often? The main thing to remember with geese is the width is always twice the depth when finished. I can never figure out how to make them four at a time though, they always turn out wrong.